Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) (32 page)

It took Alex a few minutes to make his way along the street. 

He kept to the cover of the buildings as much as he could, doing his best shuffling eater impression when he couldn’t.  None of the eaters even looked in his direction, but that wasn’t reassuring.  It would only take one.

He eventually reached the perfect place to wait for Micah, a shop with its windows smashed in, forty feet from the back edge of the horde.  He glanced back to make sure there were no eaters behind him.  Movement caught his eye.  He frowned, squinting against the glare of the morning sun.  He was almost sure he’d seen someone dart into a doorway. 

But why would any sane person be anywhere near the terrifying horde?  Unless they had some stupid idea they could save the city, that was.

Dismissing the notion, he turned away.  It must have been a trick of the light he’d seen, the sun reflecting on a window or something.  With one final check that no eaters were watching him, he crept inside the shop to hide and wait.

This close, the deep drone of the moans of so many eaters was uncomfortably loud.  Alex wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but their tone seemed to have changed.  Before, it had been a low susurration, like a wordless conversation.  Now, he heard agitation. 

The horde’s movement was more dynamic too.  They were still all swaying together, but instead of a slow ripple, the undulations now resembled more of a stormy swell. 

Providing a percussive background to the moans and rustling oscillations of thousands of eaters, the metallic barriers were grinding in their channels.  And underlying that, difficult to hear, but undoubtedly there, was the groaning of metal under stress.  Alex began to wonder if the barrier could hold against all these eaters.  If they moved against it en masse, which didn’t seem unlikely given what he now knew about them, would it be able to withstand that much pressure?

Another sound joined the ceaseless symphony of moaning and metal, the revving of a car’s engine.  Alex crawled behind a sales counter to where he could watch the street without being too visible from outside. 

A bright red Ferrari hurtled onto the road and raced towards the eaters.  Alex rolled his eyes, imagining Micah’s glee at being able to drive the sleek, stunningly expensive machine.  He was a little jealous.

The car spun in a tight, drifting u-turn at the last second, tyres skidding and squealing across the road and Micah screaming a crazed, “
Whooooo!
” from the open windows.  Alex almost laughed out loud at the grin on his face as he came to a halt facing away from the horde.  Guns ‘n’ Roses blasted from the car’s speakers.

Pandemonium erupted amongst the eaters.  They whirled towards the car, stumbling over one another in their eagerness to reach the source of all the noise.

“
Come on, you bastards
!” Micah yelled. 

He revved the engine.  The first eaters closed in. 

Their speed was startling.  Alex was used to eaters being uncoordinated, slow, only able to move in a shuffling lurch and easy to outpace.  Some of the eaters in front of him were managing a clumsy semi-jog.  Like toddlers learning to walk, they were improving.  How long would it be before they could run?

“What’re you doing?” Alex muttered.  “Move.” 

With the eaters now only feet from the back of the car and Micah still stationary, Alex began to worry something was wrong.  Finally, as the eater leading the pack touched the back of the car, Micah took off in a screech of rubber on asphalt. 

Alex dropped to the floor, huddling out of sight as a flood of eaters streamed past the shop window.  It took at least five minutes for the sound of pounding feet and excited eater moans to peter out.  By the time he dared to lift his head and creep to the window to make sure it was clear, at least eighty percent of the eaters had gone, leaving the back edge of the horde significantly closer to the barrier. 

He couldn’t help but smile.  Micah had done it. 

Patting his pocket to make sure he still had the flash drive, he moved out onto the street just in time to see the helicopter fly past overhead. 

“Well, that’s just great,” he muttered, hoping they came back soon.  He didn’t want to have to do this twice.

He made his way as rapidly as he could along the street.  There were no stragglers.  He’d been afraid eaters would be left dotted around, but they had either left to follow Micah, or stayed clustered at the barrier.  They were behaving like swarms, sticking together.  In the long run, he wasn’t sure if that would be a good or a bad thing, but for now it was definitely helpful.  He could still hear heavy metal drifting on the breeze from somewhere behind him and he hoped Micah was being careful as he led the eaters away.

The front of the building he was aiming for was still blocked by the horde, but Alex was able to circle around to the back and find a door that was, thankfully, unlocked.  Once inside, he made his way upstairs. 

The ground floor was an off licence, the first floor a flat.  They were both empty.  Alex wondered if the people who had lived and worked here were now part of the horde.  There were photos on the wall of the living room in the flat, but he intentionally avoided looking at them.  It was unlikely, but if by some chance he did find himself face to face with whoever had lived here, he didn’t want to be flashing back to seeing them smiling and happy with their loving families, then get himself killed because he hesitated.

There was no access to the roof from inside the building, so he had to find a window big enough for him to climb through. He made sure to do it at the back of the building.  If he fell, he didn’t want the added pleasure of being devoured as soon as he hit the pavement.

Standing on the windowsill, he leaned out precariously, clutching onto the frame with his left hand while his right found the edge of the roof. Making sure he had a good grip, he said a quick prayer and let go of the window frame. 

His feet lost purchase on the sill, his body swinging out.  For a few heart-stopping moments he hung by one arm with nothing between him and the ground thirty feet below.  He reached his left hand up and grabbed the edge of the roof, dangling by both arms for a few relieved seconds before hauling himself up.

He rolled onto the roof with a grunt and lay still, waiting for his heart to stop racing.  Heights didn’t worry him particularly, but he did have a fairly well developed sense of self-preservation. 

After half a minute or so, he got to his feet and walked to the other side of the roof.  The helicopter was still gone so it looked like he’d have to wait. 

The clanging of the metal barrier against the support poles was unpleasantly loud here, drowning out everything but the eater’s moans.  He could no longer hear Micah’s Ferrari.  He looked down at the crowd pressed against the metal.  The eaters closest to the barrier were pushed up against the hard surface, being crushed every time one of the horde’s undulations reached them.  The metal they pressed against was drenched with blood.  He wasn’t even sure the ones at the front were still alive.

He turned his attention to the area beyond the barrier.  Only being two storeys up, he couldn’t see very far.  The roofs of houses and shops extended into the distance, interspersed with the canopies of trees growing in back gardens and lining the residential streets.  This was a nice area of town.  At least, it had been.  Alex assumed the immediate neighbourhood had been evacuated.  Along the street he could see more of the tanks, heavy artillery and military personnel they had seen from the insurance building, although the area directly behind the barrier was clear. 

Alex briefly considered yelling and waving to get someone’s attention, but decided against it.  They would probably ignore him, thinking he was just another trapped person who wanted to get out.  And he didn’t want to advertise his presence to the eaters below.  He was fairly sure they couldn’t get into the building, but he didn’t want to test that theory.  Once he handed the flash drive off to the soldiers in the helicopter, he wanted to be able to get down again.   

Taking a couple of steps back from the edge of the roof, he turned to find a comfortable place to sit and wait. 

Something barrelled into him from behind, throwing him onto his stomach and landing on his legs.  Before he could react, he felt a tug at his waist.  He grunted as pain seared across his lower back.

The weight vanished from his thighs and he scrambled to his feet, whirling around to face his attacker.

“
Kerry?
”

The woman standing ten feet away looked nothing like the beauty he and Micah had met three days before.  She was filthy, her clothing ripped and stained, her hair matted and wild.  Blood smeared across her t-shirt and jeans.  There was even some on her face, spattered around her mouth.  Alex wasn’t sure any of it was hers.  She looked more like an eater than the poor souls on the street below.

She was holding his pistol in her right hand, pointing it at him.  In her left was a knife with a lime green handle.  There was blood on the blade.

Alex reached one hand around and touched his fingers to where his back was burning with pain.  They came away red.

Kerry laughed. The sound was manic, disturbed, her already tenuous grip on sanity obviously gone. 

“You look surprised to see me,” she said.  “You didn’t think I’d just let you get away, did you?”

Alex’s gaze was fixed on the knife.  Something about the colour...  “It was you,” he said, realisation dawning.  “You killed Buzz, Pi and Gaz.”

A frown creased her forehead.  “Who?”

“The men we left in the house on Farley Road.”

“Oh, them.”  She smiled.  “I did what you didn’t have the balls to do.  They thought I was going to rescue them.  I might have, and got them to help me come after you and the other murdering bastard, but then I saw what they had planned in the bedroom and...”  She shrugged.

Alex remembered all the times over the last few days when he thought he’d seen something.  “You’ve been following us.”

“Of course I’ve been following you.  Really, you’re not a very good detective.  I thought you’d seen me several times.”

His eyes flicked to the gun in her hand.  He had to get it back.

“You took our bikes.”

Her smile disappeared.  “I thought I would lose you when you got those, but I managed to pick up my own and find you again.  Such a good idea of Janie’s.  Trust a woman to be the practical one.  I liked her.  I really didn’t want to do what I did.”

Alex’s gut dropped.  “What did you do?”

Pure hatred flashed across her face.  “You took the man I loved from me.  So I have to take the people you love from you.”

Fear clutched at his chest.  “You’re lying.  There’s no way you’d be able to kill Janie.”

“Because she’s a white-eye?  Got the drop on you, didn’t I?  It’s a shame she didn’t get to see her son one last time though.  I was sincerely sorry for that.  I also want you to know that, after I’ve killed you, I will take no pleasure in slaughtering your neighbours.  Leon and Pat and their two adorable little girls are a lovely family.  And they were so kind to me when I visited them yesterday.”  She shrugged.  “But I have no choice.  George was everything to me.  Now the people you love have to suffer for what you did.  Their deaths will be on your dead hands.”

Alex’s teeth were crushed together so hard his jaw ached, but he barely noticed.  He didn’t feel the wound in his back.  Every muscle in his body was clenched tight.  He fought to keep control.  There would be no second chances if he made a mistake.   

“I’ll give you what you want,” he said, taking a step forward.  “I’ll give you a Survivor child.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” she spat.  “I don’t want your child now. The only thing I want is to watch you die and then kill everyone you love.”  She waved the gun at him to step back.

“Kerry...”

“
Move!
” she screeched, aiming the pistol at his head.

Alex shuffled slowly backwards until his calves touched the low wall at the edge of the roof.  He glanced over the side.  Thanks to Kerry’s shouting, many of the eaters were now looking in his direction.  Seeing him, they moaned and reached up their hands.

“Now jump.”

Alex whipped his head back around to look at her.  “
What
?”

“You heard me.”

Panic clutched at him.  If he died, she would go after Leon’s family. 

“Kerry, please...”

“Jump or I shoot you in both legs and push you over.”

Alex looked down at the sea of eaters again.  He would never survive.  “I can...”

She lowered the pistol to point at his thigh.

“Alright, alright,” he said quickly.

He turned to face the edge of the roof, frantically searching for something to help him.  There was nothing, no awnings, no lamps attached to the building, not even a shop sign.  Nothing but smooth, featureless brick wall between him and the starving horde. 

Then, as he looked down, an image flashed into his mind; Luke Skywalker standing over the sarlacc’s pit, Jabba the Hutt watching from his sailbarge.  Alex looked at the edge of the roof.  Maybe a trained gymnast could do it, but him?